Scott, Sir Walter (1771–1832). Poet, novelist, man of letters. Scott distilled the literary and historical culture of the
Scottish Enlightenment into the first great European works of historical fiction. A patriot and publicist, he placed Scotland on the international tourist map as a land of enlightenment and romance. The son of an Edinburgh lawyer, educated for the Scottish bar, Scott remained an active lawyer for the rest of his life, becoming latterly sheriff depute of Selkirk and principal clerk of Session. His literary career began in the school playground, telling stories to his friends. He first made his mark as a poet, collecting, editing, and adapting border ballads and later writing enormously popular narrative poems of which the
Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805) and
Marmion (1808) are probably the best. His career as a novelist began in 1814 with the publication of
Waverley, followed by another 24 novels which appeared at almost yearly intervals until the end of his life. In addition he edited standard editions of
Swift and
Dryden, wrote a series of lives of the novelists, a profusion of reviews, and an enormous personal correspondence. By the early 1820s he was sometimes writing more than 15,000 words per day. He built Abbotsford out of his substantial profits, turning it into an extraordinary physical embodiment of his taste for antiquities, real and phoney, and his more modern respect for creature comforts. Bankruptcy in 1825 and failing health overshadowed his later years, but yielded a
Journal, a work of genius, posthumously published and surprisingly little read. Scott was a man universally liked, known, and admired.
Nicholas Phillipson
